Method and system for data optimization

ABSTRACT

Embodiments can provide an intelligent vehicle that determines that the vehicle interior comprises multiple occupants; identifies the occupants; based on the driving behavior of the vehicle, creates a composite occupant profile associated with the group of plural occupants, the composite occupant profile comprising the identities of the plural occupants and group preferences for various vendor products or services; and, based on the composite occupant profile and received inputs from a user interface, an automatic vehicle location system, and a plurality of sensors in the vehicle, performs one or more actions, such as: (a) proposing one or more vendor products or services for the group of occupants; (b) publishing the vendor products or services selected by the group of occupants, via a social network, to associated or selected associates of the occupants in the group; and (c) presenting advertisement information from a vendor server associated with the proposed or selected vendor products or services to one or more of the occupants in the group.

CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS

The present application claims the benefits of and priority, under 35U.S.C. § 119(e), to U.S. Provisional Application Ser. No. 62/424,976,filed on Nov. 21, 2016, entitled “Next Generation Vehicle,” the entiredisclosure of which is hereby incorporated by reference, in itsentirety, for all that it teaches and for all purposes.

FIELD

The present disclosure is generally directed to vehicle systems, inparticular, toward electric and/or hybrid-electric vehicles.

BACKGROUND

In recent years, transportation methods have changed substantially. Thischange is due in part to a concern over the limited availability ofnatural resources, a proliferation in personal technology, and asocietal shift to adopt more environmentally friendly transportationsolutions. These considerations have encouraged the development of anumber of new flexible-fuel vehicles, hybrid-electric vehicles, andelectric vehicles.

While these vehicles appear to be new they are generally implemented asa number of traditional subsystems that are merely tied to analternative power source. In fact, the design and construction of thevehicles is limited to standard frame sizes, shapes, materials, andtransportation concepts. Among other things, these limitations fail totake advantage of the benefits of new technology, power sources, andsupport infrastructure. In particular, the implementation of anartificially intelligent vehicle has lagged far behind the developmentvehicle subsystems.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

FIG. 1 shows a vehicle in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure;

FIG. 2 shows a plan view of the vehicle in accordance with at least someembodiments of the present disclosure;

FIG. 3 shows a plan view of the vehicle in accordance with embodimentsof the present disclosure

FIG. 4 shows an embodiment of the instrument panel of the vehicleaccording to one embodiment of the present disclosure;

FIG. 5 is a block diagram of a computing environment associated with theembodiments presented herein;

FIG. 6 is a block diagram of a computing device associated with one ormore components described herein;

FIG. 7 is a block of a computing environment associated with theembodiments presented herein;

FIG. 8 is block diagram of a computational system in a vehicle andassociated with one or more components described herein;

FIG. 9 is a flow chart associated with one or more embodiments presentedherein;

FIG. 10 is a flow chart associated with one or more embodimentspresented herein;

FIG. 11 is a flow chart associated with one or more embodimentspresented herein; and

FIG. 12 is a block diagram of a computing system associated with one ormore components described herein.

DETAILED DESCRIPTION

Embodiments of the present disclosure will be described in connectionwith a vehicle, and in some embodiments, an electric vehicle,rechargeable electric vehicle, and/or hybrid-electric vehicle andassociated systems.

Embodiments can provide an intelligent vehicle that determines that thevehicle interior comprises multiple occupants; identifies the occupants;based on the driving behavior of the vehicle, creates a compositeoccupant profile associated with the group of plural occupants, thecomposite occupant profile comprising the identities of the pluraloccupants and group preferences for various vendor products or services;and, based on the composite occupant profile and received inputs from auser interface, an automatic vehicle location system, and a plurality ofsensors in the vehicle, performs one or more actions, such as: (a)proposing one or more vendor products or services for the group ofoccupants; (b) publishing the vendor products or services selected bythe group of occupants, via a social network, to associated or selectedassociates of the occupants in the group; and (c) presentingadvertisement information from a vendor server associated with theproposed or selected vendor products or services to one or more of theoccupants in the group.

The intelligent vehicle can anticipate the needs of individual occupantsand groups of occupants and thereby reduce fewer operator distractions,provide a more pleasurable driving experience, enable more effectiveinteraction between vendors and mobile customers, and publishautomatically specified vehicle-collected information to a socialnetwork associated with an occupant. The ability to create andeffectively use composite or group profiles can further reduce the timerequired for the group to agree upon a course of action or other option,reduce disagreements among vehicle occupants, and filter outunacceptable possible courses of action or options from those presentedto the group.

FIG. 1 shows a perspective view of a vehicle 100 in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. The electric vehicle 100comprises a vehicle front 110, vehicle aft 120, vehicle roof 130, atleast one vehicle side 160, a vehicle undercarriage 140, and a vehicleinterior 150. In any event, the vehicle 100 may include a frame 104 andone or more body panels 108 mounted or affixed thereto. The vehicle 100may include one or more interior components (e.g., components inside aninterior space 150, or user space, of a vehicle 100, etc.), exteriorcomponents (e.g., components outside of the interior space 150, or userspace, of a vehicle 100, etc.), drive systems, controls systems,structural components, etc.

Although shown in the form of a car, it should be appreciated that thevehicle 100 described herein may include any conveyance or model of aconveyance, where the conveyance was designed for the purpose of movingone or more tangible objects, such as people, animals, cargo, and thelike. The term “vehicle” does not require that a conveyance moves or iscapable of movement. Typical vehicles may include but are in no waylimited to cars, trucks, motorcycles, busses, automobiles, trains,railed conveyances, boats, ships, marine conveyances, submarineconveyances, airplanes, space craft, flying machines, human-poweredconveyances, and the like.

Referring now to FIG. 2, a plan view of an undercarriage vehicle 100will be described in accordance with embodiments of the presentdisclosure. As provided above, the vehicle 100 may comprise a number ofelectrical and/or mechanical systems, subsystems, etc. The mechanicalsystems of the vehicle 100 can include structural, power, safety, andcommunications subsystems, to name a few. While each subsystem may bedescribed separately, it should be appreciated that the components of aparticular subsystem may be shared between one or more other subsystemsof the vehicle 100.

The structural subsystem includes the frame 104 of the vehicle 100. Theframe 104 may comprise one or more surfaces, connections, protrusions,cavities, mounting points, tabs, slots, or other features that areconfigured to receive other components that make up the vehicle 100. Forexample, the body panels 108, powertrain subsystem, controls systems,interior components, communications subsystem, and safety subsystem mayinterconnect with, or attach to, the frame 104 of the vehicle 100.

The frame 104 may attach or operatively engage one or more modularsystem and/or subsystems. Among other things, the frame can be attachedto batteries, capacitors, power sources 208A, 208B, motors 212, engines,safety equipment, controllers, user interfaces, interiors exteriorcomponents, body panels 108, bumpers 216, sensors, etc., and/orcombinations thereof.

The power system of the vehicle 100 may include the powertrain, powerdistribution system, accessory power system, and/or any other componentsthat store power, provide power, convert power, and/or distribute powerto one or more portions of the vehicle 100. The powertrain may includethe one or more DC or AC electric motors 212 of the vehicle 100. Theelectric motors 212 are configured to convert electrical energy providedby a power source into mechanical energy to propel or otherwise providea motive force for the vehicle 100.

In some embodiments, the vehicle 100 may include one or more drivewheels 220 that are driven by the one or more electric motors 212 andmotor controllers 214. The powertrain may include one or more powertransmission components, motor controllers 214, and/or power controllersthat can provide a controlled output of power to one or more of thedrive wheels 220 of the vehicle 100. The power transmission components,power controllers, or motor controllers 214 may be controlled by atleast one other vehicle controller or computer system as describedherein.

The power source 208 can include one or more energy storage systemscomprising batteries or modules configured as a battery pack. Thebattery can be any type of battery for storing electrical energy, forexample, a lithium ion battery, a lead acid battery, a nickel cadmiumbattery, etc. Further, the battery may include different types of powerstorage systems, such as, ionic fluids or other types of fuel cellsystems. The energy storage systems may also include one or morehigh-capacity capacitors. The capacitors may be used for long-term orshort-term storage of electrical energy.

The powertrain includes one or more power distribution systemsconfigured to transmit power from the power source 208 to one or moreelectric motors 212 in the vehicle 100. The power distribution systemmay include electrical interconnections 228 and 232 in the form ofcables, wires, traces, wireless power transmission systems, etc., and/orcombinations thereof.

In some embodiments, the power distribution system may include an energyrecovery system 236. This energy recovery system 236, or kinetic energyrecovery system, may be configured to recover energy produced by themovement of a vehicle 100. The recovered energy may be stored aselectrical and/or mechanical energy.

The vehicle 100 may include one or more safety systems. Vehicle safetysystems can include a variety of mechanical and/or electrical componentsincluding, but in no way limited to, low impact or energy-absorbingbumpers 216A, 216B, crumple zones, reinforced body panels, reinforcedframe components, impact bars, power source containment zones, safetyglass, seatbelts, supplemental restraint systems, air bags, escapehatches, removable access panels, impact sensors, accelerometers, visionsystems, radar systems, etc., and/or the like. In some embodiments, theone or more of the safety components may include a safety sensor orgroup of safety sensors associated with the one or more of the safetycomponents. For example, a crumple zone may include one or more straingages, impact sensors, pressure transducers, etc. These sensors may beconfigured to detect or determine whether a portion of the vehicle 100has been subjected to a particular force, deformation, or other impact.Once detected, the information collected by the sensors may betransmitted or sent to one or more of a controller of the vehicle 100(e.g., a safety controller, vehicle controller, etc.) or a communicationdevice associated with the vehicle 100 (e.g., across a communicationnetwork, etc.).

FIG. 3 shows a plan view of the vehicle 100 in accordance withembodiments of the present disclosure. In particular, FIG. 3 shows abroken section 302 of a charging system 300 for the vehicle 100. Thecharging system 300 may include a plug or receptacle 304 configured toreceive power from an external power source (e.g., a source of powerthat is external to and/or separate from the vehicle 100, etc.). Powerreceived at the plug/receptacle 304 may be transferred via at least onepower transmission interconnection 308. Electrical energy in the form ofcharge can be transferred from the external power source to the chargecontroller 224. As provided above, the charge controller 224 mayregulate the addition of charge to at least one power source 208 of thevehicle 100 (e.g., until the at least one power source 208 is full or ata capacity, etc.).

In addition to the mechanical components described herein, the vehicle100 may include a number of user interface devices. The user interfacedevices receive and translate human input into a mechanical movement orelectrical signal or stimulus. The human input may be one or more ofmotion (e.g., body movement, body part movement, in two-dimensional orthree-dimensional space, etc.), voice, touch, and/or physicalinteraction with the components of the vehicle 100. In some embodiments,the human input may be configured to control one or more functions ofthe vehicle 100 and/or systems of the vehicle 100 described herein. Userinterfaces may include, but are in no way limited to, at least onegraphical user interface of a display device, steering wheel ormechanism, transmission lever or button (e.g., including park, neutral,reverse, and/or drive positions, etc.), throttle control pedal ormechanism, brake control pedal or mechanism, power control switch,communications equipment, etc.

FIG. 4 shows one embodiment of the instrument panel 400 of the vehicle100. The instrument panel 400 of vehicle 100 comprises a steering wheel410, a vehicle operational display 420 (e.g., configured to presentand/or display driving data such as speed, measured air resistance,vehicle information, entertainment information, etc.), one or moreauxiliary displays 424 (e.g., configured to present and/or displayinformation segregated from the operational display 420, entertainmentapplications, movies, music, etc.), a heads-up display 434 (e.g.,configured to display any information previously described including,but in no way limited to, guidance information such as route todestination, or obstacle warning information to warn of a potentialcollision, or some or all primary vehicle operational data such asspeed, resistance, etc.), a power management display 428 (e.g.,configured to display data corresponding to electric power levels ofvehicle 100, reserve power, charging status, etc.), and an input device432 (e.g., a controller, touchscreen, or other interface deviceconfigured to interface with one or more displays in the instrumentpanel or components of the vehicle 100. The input device 432 may beconfigured as a joystick, mouse, touchpad, tablet, 3D gesture capturedevice, etc.). In some embodiments, the input device 432 may be used tomanually maneuver a portion of the vehicle 100 into a charging position(e.g., moving a charging plate to a desired separation distance, etc.).

While one or more of displays of instrument panel 400 may betouch-screen displays, it should be appreciated that the vehicleoperational display may be a display incapable of receiving touch input.For instance, the operational display 420 that spans across an interiorspace centerline 404 and across both a first zone 408A and a second zone408B may be isolated from receiving input from touch, especially from apassenger. In some cases, a display that provides vehicle operation orcritical systems information and interface may be restricted fromreceiving touch input and/or be configured as a non-touch display. Thistype of configuration can prevent dangerous mistakes in providing touchinput where such input may cause an accident or unwanted control.

In some embodiments, one or more displays of the instrument panel 400may be mobile devices and/or applications residing on a mobile devicesuch as a smart phone. Additionally or alternatively, any of theinformation described herein may be presented to one or more portions420A-N of the operational display 420 or other display 424, 428, 434. Inone embodiment, one or more displays of the instrument panel 400 may bephysically separated or detached from the instrument panel 400. In somecases, a detachable display may remain tethered to the instrument panel.

The portions 420A-N of the operational display 420 may be dynamicallyreconfigured and/or resized to suit any display of information asdescribed. Additionally or alternatively, the number of portions 420A-Nused to visually present information via the operational display 420 maybe dynamically increased or decreased as required, and are not limitedto the configurations shown.

FIG. 5 illustrates a block diagram of a computing environment 500 thatmay function as the servers, user computers, or other systems providedand described herein. The environment 500 includes one or more usercomputers, or computing devices, such as a vehicle computing device 504,a communication device 508, and/or more 512. The computing devices 504,508, 512 may include general purpose personal computers (including,merely by way of example, personal computers, and/or laptop computersrunning various versions of Microsoft Corp.'s Windows® and/or AppleCorp.'s Macintosh® operating systems) and/or workstation computersrunning any of a variety of commercially-available UNIX® or UNIX-likeoperating systems. These computing devices 504, 508, 512 may also haveany of a variety of applications, including for example, database clientand/or server applications, and web browser applications. Alternatively,the computing devices 504, 508, 512 may be any other electronic device,such as a thin-client computer, Internet-enabled mobile telephone,computer wearable, and/or personal digital assistant, capable ofcommunicating via a network 510 and/or displaying and navigating webpages or other types of electronic documents. Although the exemplarycomputer environment 500 is shown with two computing devices, any numberof user computers or computing devices may be supported.

Environment 500 further includes a network 510. The network 510 may canbe any type of network familiar to those skilled in the art that cansupport data communications using any of a variety ofcommercially-available protocols, including without limitation SIP,TCP/IP, SNA, IPX, AppleTalk, and the like. Merely by way of example, thenetwork 510 maybe a local area network (“LAN”), such as an Ethernetnetwork, a Token-Ring network and/or the like; a wide-area network; avirtual network, including without limitation a virtual private network(“VPN”); the Internet; an intranet; an extranet; a public switchedtelephone network (“PSTN”); an infra-red network; a wireless network(e.g., a network operating under any of the IEEE 802.9 suite ofprotocols, the Bluetooth® protocol known in the art, and/or any otherwireless protocol); and/or any combination of these and/or othernetworks.

The system may also include one or more servers 514, 516. In thisexample, server 514 is shown as a web server and server 516 is shown asan application server. The web server 514, which may be used to processrequests for web pages or other electronic documents from computingdevices 504, 508, 512. The web server 514 can be running an operatingsystem including any of those discussed above, as well as anycommercially-available server operating systems. The web server 514 canalso run a variety of server applications, including SIP (SessionInitiation Protocol) servers, HTTP(s) servers, FTP servers, CGI servers,database servers, Java servers, and the like. In some instances, the webserver 514 may publish operations available operations as one or moreweb services.

The environment 500 may also include one or more file and or/applicationservers 516, which can, in addition to an operating system, include oneor more applications accessible by a client running on one or more ofthe computing devices 504, 508, 512. The server(s) 516 and/or 514 may beone or more general purpose computers capable of executing programs orscripts in response to the computing devices 504, 508, 512. As oneexample, the server 516, 514 may execute one or more web applications.The web application may be implemented as one or more scripts orprograms written in any programming language, such as Java™, C, C#®, orC++, and/or any scripting language, such as Perl, Python, or TCL, aswell as combinations of any programming/scripting languages. Theapplication server(s) 516 may also include database servers, includingwithout limitation those commercially available from Oracle®,Microsoft®, Sybase®, IBM® and the like, which can process requests fromdatabase clients running on a computing device 504, 508, 512.

The web pages created by the server 514 and/or 516 may be forwarded to acomputing device 504, 508, 512 via a web (file) server 514, 516.Similarly, the web server 514 may be able to receive web page requests,web services invocations, and/or input data from a computing device 504,508, 512 (e.g., a user computer, etc.) and can forward the web pagerequests and/or input data to the web (application) server 516. Infurther embodiments, the server 516 may function as a file server.Although for ease of description, FIG. 5 illustrates a separate webserver 514 and file/application server 516, those skilled in the artwill recognize that the functions described with respect to servers 514,516 may be performed by a single server and/or a plurality ofspecialized servers, depending on implementation-specific needs andparameters. The computer systems 504, 508, 512, web (file) server 514and/or web (application) server 516 may function as the system, devices,or components described in FIGS. 1-5.

The environment 500 may also include a database 518. The database 518may reside in a variety of locations. By way of example, database 518may reside on a storage medium local to (and/or resident in) one or moreof the computers 504, 508, 512, 514, 516. Alternatively, it may beremote from any or all of the computers 504, 508, 512, 514, 516, and incommunication (e.g., via the network 510) with one or more of these. Thedatabase 518 may reside in a storage-area network (“SAN”) familiar tothose skilled in the art. Similarly, any necessary files for performingthe functions attributed to the computers 504, 508, 512, 514, 516 may bestored locally on the respective computer and/or remotely, asappropriate. The database 518 may be a relational database, such asOracle 20i®, that is adapted to store, update, and retrieve data inresponse to SQL-formatted commands.

FIG. 6 illustrates one embodiment of a computer system 600 upon whichthe servers, user computers, computing devices, or other systems orcomponents described above may be deployed or executed. The computersystem 600 is shown comprising hardware elements that may beelectrically coupled via a bus 604. The hardware elements may includeone or more central processing units (CPUs) 608; one or more inputdevices 612 (e.g., a mouse, a keyboard, etc.); and one or more outputdevices 616 (e.g., a display device, a printer, etc.). The computersystem 600 may also include one or more storage devices 620. By way ofexample, storage device(s) 620 may be disk drives, optical storagedevices, solid-state storage devices such as a random access memory(“RAM”) and/or a read-only memory (“ROM”), which can be programmable,flash-updateable and/or the like.

The computer system 600 may additionally include a computer-readablestorage media reader 624; a communications system 628 (e.g., a modem, anetwork card (wireless or wired), an infra-red communication device,etc.); and working memory 636, which may include RAM and ROM devices asdescribed above. The computer system 600 may also include a processingacceleration unit 632, which can include a DSP, a special-purposeprocessor, and/or the like.

The computer-readable storage media reader 624 can further be connectedto a computer-readable storage medium, together (and, optionally, incombination with storage device(s) 620) comprehensively representingremote, local, fixed, and/or removable storage devices plus storagemedia for temporarily and/or more permanently containingcomputer-readable information. The communications system 628 may permitdata to be exchanged with a network and/or any other computer describedabove with respect to the computer environments described herein.Moreover, as disclosed herein, the term “storage medium” may representone or more devices for storing data, including read only memory (ROM),random access memory (RAM), magnetic RAM, core memory, magnetic diskstorage mediums, optical storage mediums, flash memory devices and/orother machine readable mediums for storing information.

The computer system 600 may also comprise software elements, shown asbeing currently located within a working memory 636, including anoperating system 640 and/or other code 644. It should be appreciatedthat alternate embodiments of a computer system 600 may have numerousvariations from that described above. For example, customized hardwaremight also be used and/or particular elements might be implemented inhardware, software (including portable software, such as applets), orboth. Further, connection to other computing devices such as networkinput/output devices may be employed.

Examples of the processors 608 as described herein may include, but arenot limited to, at least one of Qualcomm® Snapdragon® 800 and 801,Qualcomm® Snapdragon® 620 and 615 with 4G LTE Integration and 64-bitcomputing, Apple® A7 processor with 64-bit architecture, Apple® M7motion coprocessors, Samsung® Exynos® series, the Intel® Core™ family ofprocessors, the Intel® Xeon® family of processors, the Intel® Atom™family of processors, the Intel Itanium® family of processors, Intel®Core® i5-4670K and i7-4770K 22 nm Haswell, Intel® Core® i5-3570K 22 nmIvy Bridge, the AMD® FX™ family of processors, AMD® FX-4300, FX-6300,and FX-8350 32 nm Vishera, AMD® Kaveri processors, Texas Instruments®Jacinto C6000™ automotive infotainment processors, Texas Instruments®OMAP™ automotive-grade mobile processors, ARM® Cortex™-M processors,ARM® Cortex-A and ARM926EJ-S™ processors, other industry-equivalentprocessors, and may perform computational functions using any known orfuture-developed standard, instruction set, libraries, and/orarchitecture.

With reference to FIG. 7, the vehicle 120 is in wireless communication,via network 510, with one or more vendor server(s) 808A-N, a mapdatabase manager 812 and associated map database 816, and a vehicledatabase manager 820 and associated vehicle database 824.

FIG. 7 is a particular implementation of the computing environment ofFIG. 5. The vendor server(s) 808A-N are each associated with acorresponding vendor location, such as a brick-and-mortar storefront oroffice building and communicate with the vehicle 120, map databasemanager 2012, and vehicle database manager 820 regarding informationrelated to the respective vendor. For example, the vendor server 808 canprovide to the vehicle 120 and/or map database manager 812 informationrelated to the respective vendor and its product and/or serviceofferings, such as hours of operation, available product and/or servicetypes, prices, brands, specifications, requirements, availabilities,advertising, and the like, sales specials and other price discounts andspecial offers and terms and conditions, referral percentages, fees, orpayments for referring the vendor to an occupant of the vehicle 120, andother data element(s) and further data fields, such as geographicallocation of the respective vendor location, and the like.

The map database manager 812 and map database 816 interact with anautomatic vehicle location system 908 (discussed below) in the vehicle120 to provide navigation or map output to the vehicle occupants.

The map database manager 812 stores and recalls spatial map informationfrom the map database 816.

The map database 816 contains plural maps. Maps are commonly stored asgraphs, or two or three dimensional arrays of objects with attributes oflocation and category, where some common categories include parks,roads, cities, and the like. A map database commonly represents a roadnetwork along with associated features, with the road networkcorresponding to a selected road network model. Commonly, such a modelcomprises basic elements (nodes, links and areas) of the road networkand properties of those elements (location coordinates, shape,addresses, road class, speed range, etc.). The basic elements arereferred to as features and the properties as attributes. Otherinformation associated with the road network can also be included, suchas points of interest, waypoints, building shapes, and politicalboundaries. Geographic Data Files (GDF) is a standardized description ofsuch a model. Each node within a map graph represents a point locationof the surface of the Earth and can be represented by a pair oflongitude (lon) and latitude (lat) coordinates. Each link can representa stretch of road between two nodes, and be represented by a linesegment (corresponding to a straight section of road) or a curve havinga shape that is generally described by intermediate points (called shapepoints) along the link. However, curves can also be represented by acombination of centroid (point or node), with a radius, and polarcoordinates to define the boundaries of the curve. Shape points can berepresented by longitude and latitude coordinates as are nodes, butshape points generally do not serve the purpose of connecting links, asdo nodes. Areas are generally two- or three-dimensional shapes thatrepresent things like parks, cities, blocks and are defined by theirboundaries (usually formed by a closed polygon).

Auxiliary data can be attached to the features and/or attributes.Various navigational functions, involving vendor information requiredata that is not considered to be part of a map database and is likelysupplied by the vendor. This data (such as any of the data structures:information related to the respective vendor and its product and/orservice offerings, such as hours of operation, available product and/orservice types, prices, brands, specifications, requirements,availabilities, advertising, and the like, sales specials and otherprice discounts and special offers and terms and conditions, referralpercentages, fees, or payments for referring the vendor to an occupantof the vehicle 120, and other data element(s) and further data fields,such as geographical location of the respective vendor location, and thelike), should be cross-referenced with the entities and attributes ofthe main map database 816.

Since the auxiliary data is not necessarily compiled with the main mapdatabase some other means is generally needed to establishcross-referencing, which is referred to as attaching the auxiliary data.The common approaches are function-specific referencing tables andgeneric referencing.

Function-specific referencing tables provide a technique for attachingfunction-specific data to a map-data base produced by any participatingvendor. Such a table can be collaboratively produced to support aspecific function or class of functions involving location-basedservice, active-safety or advanced driver assistance. It will generallyinclude a list of map elements of a specific type (e.g., links,intersections, point-of-interest locations, etc.) along with identifyingattributes (e.g., street names, longitude/latitude coordinates, etc.).Additionally, each entry in the table can be assigned a uniqueidentifier.

Generic referencing attaches data to any map database by discoveringreference information through a form of map matching. Thefunction-specific data items can be assigned to elements, such aspoints, links or areas, that likely only approximate the correspondingmap elements in a specific map database. A search of the map databasecan be made for the best fit. To enhance the search process, neighboringelements can be appended to each given element to help ensure that thecorrect solution is found in each case. For example, if the map elementis a link connecting two intersections, then one or both cross streetscould be appended for the sake of the search thereby making an incorrectmatch unlikely.

The vehicle database manager 820 and vehicle database 824 interact withan automatic vehicle location system 908 (discussed below) in thevehicle 120 and vendor server(s) 808 to provide vehicle occupantinformation and vehicle location (such as determined by the automaticvehicle location system) to the vendor server(s) 808, provide receivedvendor information to the vehicle occupants, and effect payments by thecorresponding vendor to the operator or owner of the vehicle database824 for referrals. The owner of the vehicle database 824 is typicallythe vehicle manufacturer but can be any data management entity, such asa provider of satellite-based navigation information (e.g., Garmin™,Google™, Waze™, and the like), or an online network transportationcompany (such as Uber Technologies™ or Lyft™).

The vehicle database manager 812 stores and recalls vehicle and occupantinformation from the vehicle database 816.

The vehicle database 816 can be constructed according to any data model,whether conceptual, logical, or physical, such as a flat model,hierarchical model, network model, relational model, object-relationalmodel, star schema, entity-relationship model, geographic model, genericmodel, semantic model, and the like. The data contained in the vehicledatabase 816 includes vehicle-related information (such as vehiclemanufacturer, type, model, manufacture year, ownership, warrantycoverage, serial number(s), current geographic location and occupantidentifications, specifications, capabilities, currently sensedoperational parameters for the vehicle, service history, and otherinformation), occupant or potential occupant (whether operator orpassenger) information (such as occupation, identities, age, sex,biometric information, authentication information, preferences, hobbies,and other interests, socioeconomic status, historic behavior patterns,profiles, transaction history with one or more vendors, nationality,ethnicity and race, language preferences (e.g., Spanish, English,Chinese, etc.), current occupant role (e.g., operator or passenger),Internet search history, social networking memberships andrelationships, (e.g., friends), credit card and other financialinformation, electronic calendar information (e.g., Outlook™), medicalinformation and history, and other information.

The vehicle database 816 can obtain occupant permissive access to thedata collected by an occupant assistant in the vehicle by one or moretechniques. In one technique, the purchaser of a vehicle is given aprice discount in exchange for agreeing to enable the vehicle to collectcertain types of data and provide the data to the vehicle databasemanager. In another technique, the occupant is given a financialincentive, such as price discounts on application offerings and otheradd-on services provided by an entity operating the vehicle database, inexchange for permitting the vehicle to collect and provide certain typesof data to the vehicle database manager. In another technique, theoccupant is provided with updates or application downloads in exchangefor consenting to the vehicle collection and provision of certain typesof data.

With reference to FIG. 8, an on board occupant interaction system 900 inthe vehicle 120 is depicted. The interaction system 900 includes anoccupant assistant 904 in communication with an automatic vehiclelocation system 908 and associated satellite location system 912, socialnetworking system 970, sensed user data 916, occupant profile(s) 974,sensor connectivity manager 966 and associated first, second, . . . mthsensors 912A-M, user interface 920, authentication system 978, andnavigation information 924.

The occupant assistant 904, based on received inputs from the automaticvehicle location system 908, social networking system 970, sensed userdata 916, sensor connectivity manager 966, user interface 920,authentication system 978, and navigation information 924 received fromthe map database manager 812, can perform various functions including:proposing one or more destinations or waypoints (such as a restaurant,store, other vendor location, point of interest, etc.) in navigationinformation provided to an occupant, such as a driver, via the userinterface 920; publishing occupant- or vehicle-related information, viaa social network, to associated or selected associates of the occupant;collecting occupant- and vehicle-related information (including any ofthe information described above) and forwarding the collectedinformation to a vendor server, map database manager 812, and/or vehicledatabase manager 820; and presenting advertisement information, such asweb pages and hyperlinks, from a vendor server 808 or vehicle databasemanager 820 to an occupant. The occupant can select a recommended orsuggested destination or waypoint, which is then updated by the vehiclemap database manager 812 to direct the vehicle 120 to the waypoint ordestination.

The automatic vehicle location system 908 is in communication with thesatellite location system 912 (such as a Global Positioning System (orNavstar GPS) or GPS transmitter) to acquire current vehicle positioncoordinates, which position coordinates are then correlated by the mapdatabase manager 812 to a position on a road. Dead reckoning usingdistance data from one or more sensors 912 attached to the drive train,a gyroscope sensor 912 and/or an accelerometer sensor 912 can be usedfor greater reliability, as GPS signal loss and/or multipath can occurdue to the map database manager 812, such as due to a cellular signaldead or low signal strength area or passage of the vehicle through atunnel. As will be appreciated, a GPS satellite location system or GPSreceiver, and when used for vehicle navigation commonly referred tosimply as a GPS, is a device that is capable of receiving informationfrom GPS satellites (not shown) and then to accurately calculate the GPSlocation system's geographical location. The GPS navigation device orGPS receiver can be on board the vehicle 120 on a portable computationalor communication device of an occupant (such as a smart phone, tabletcomputer, personal navigation assistant, or laptop PC), As will beappreciated, any other satellite location or navigation system can beemployed, such as GLOM SS, DeiDou Navigation Satellite System, Galileo,GAGAN, IRNSS, and the like.

The social networking system 970 maintains occupant social networkinginformation, such as social networking service memberships oraffiliations, associations with other social network members (e.g.,friends), and member profiles, and posts or publishes content selectedby the occupant assistant 904 to one or more social networking sitesand/or friends selected by the occupant. For example, the socialnetworking system 970 can post or publish selected sensed user data,such as occupant observations based on occupant driving behavior (e.g.,a frequently visited location of the occupant), or vehicle data, such asvehicle geographical location.

The sensed user data 916 is user or occupant behavior and stateinformation sensed by the on board computer in the vehicle 120, such ascurrent or historical user driving behavior, historical user route,destination, and waypoint preferences, user identities, and the like.This information can be sensed by the first, second, . . . Mth sensor912A-M. This information can be used by the occupant assistant 904 todevelop an occupant profile 974.

The occupant profile 974 can include a variety of occupant information,including occupation, identity, age, sex, biometric information,authentication information, preferences, hobbies, and other interests,socioeconomic status, historic behavior patterns, profiles, visitationand/or transaction history with one or more vendors, nationality,ethnicity and race, language preferences (e.g., Spanish, English,Chinese, etc.), current occupant role (e.g., operator or passenger),occupant priority ranking (e.g., vehicle owner is given a higher rankingthan a child occupant), Internet search history, social networkingmemberships and relationships, (e.g., friends), credit card and otherfinancial information, electronic calendar information (e.g., Outlook™),medical information and history, and other information. The occupantprofile 974 is normally attributed to the vehicle operator and theoccupant preference values are populated and/or updated by the occupantassistant 904 or vehicle database manager 820 as the occupant operatesthe vehicle.

The first, second, . . . mth sensors 912 a-m can include a camera tocapture images captured of interior or exterior objects (such asoccupants, roadways, roadside signals, and the like), a seat belt sensorto determine seat belt settings (e.g., closed or open), a seat weightsensor settings, a microphone to capture audio within the vehicle (suchas occupant comments which are then input into a speech-tip-text engineto determine or identify one or more words spoken by an occupant), awireless network node that receives unique identifiers of occupantportable computing devices (which identifiers can be associated with acorresponding occupant to identify the occupant), and the like. In someapplications, a portable computing device of the occupant is employed asa sensor that tracks occupant location when he or she is absent from thevehicle, collects social networking service and site affiliations andmember associations, Internet searches and browsing history, and othertypes and products of occupant behavior. The information is uploaded tothe sensor connectivity manager 966 when the occupant returns to thevehicle. The sensor output provided, by the sensor connectivity manager966, is then provided to the occupant assistant 904.

The user interface 920 receives user commands and other input, such asuser selections, preferences, and settings that are used in configuring,determining, and selecting vehicle parameters, settings, or operations,such as navigation route selection, Internet search requests or browsinghistory, social networking service and site affiliations and memberassociations, and other types and products of occupant behavior. Theuser interface 920 can be one or more of vehicle instrument panel 400,vehicle operational display 420, heads-up display 434, and powermanagement display 428. It can also be a portable computational orcommunication device of an occupant.

The authentication system 978 authenticates occupants using userselected credentials (e.g., password or personal identification number),a user computing device or keyfob emitted signal sequence or content(which sequence or content can be unique or substantially unique andtherefore used to identify an associated user), and biometricphysiological or behavioral information of the occupant, such as afingerprint, palm vein pattern, facial characteristic, DNA sequence,palm print, hand geometry, iris characteristic, retina characteristic,odour/scent, occupant weight, and voice print or spectralcharacteristic. Behavioral biometric information includes seat settings,typing rhythm, and gait.

The navigation information 924 can take many forms depending on theconfiguration. When the navigation information 924 received by thevehicle from the automatic vehicle location system is provided, vianetwork 510, to the map database manager 812, it can be the map or othernavigation information provided by the map database manager 812 to theoccupant, including possible routes and is periodically updated withselected route map information. When the navigation information isreceived by the automatic vehicle location system and used by thevehicle itself to configure, determine or select possible routes, it ismap information from the map database 816 that is selected based on arequest received by the map database manager 812 from the vehicle 120.The request can include the current vehicle location as determined bythe automatic vehicle location system 908 and the locations of the userselected waypoints and destination.

A number of examples will now be used to explain the various operationsof the occupant assistant 904.

In a first example, the occupant assistant 904, in response to a triggersuch as time-of-day, vehicle location, a vehicle being parked, or otherstimulus, determines a current location of the vehicle, retrieves aselected occupant or composite profile corresponding to a selectedoccupant of group of occupants currently in the vehicle, causes the mapdatabase manager 812 to search the map database 816 for specificinformation referenced in the selected occupant or composite profile,such as a restaurant, storefront, other vendor location, point ofinterest, and the like, within a defined spatial range of the vehicle,and, when a map feature matches the specific information, the occupantassistant 904 alerts one or more vehicle occupants, such as by updatinga displayed navigation map or providing a message or prompt on the userinterface or providing an audible voice message to the occupant(s) via avoice synthesizer.

In one variation of the first example, the occupant assistant 904 and/orvehicle database manager compares a need, specification, or requirementagainst a need, specification, or requirement of a vendor in determiningwhether or not to recommend or suggest the vendor to the selectedoccupant(s). For example, the occupant assistant 904 determines that thevehicle contains a family of four occupants (two adults and twochildren). The vehicle 904 directly or via the vehicle database manager,publishes this information to vendors within a selected spatial range ofthe current vehicle location (e.g., 2 miles). Each of the variousvendors reviews its needs, specifications, requirements, oravailabilities (e.g., it currently has an open table for a family offour) and responds with this information, possibly including a pricediscount or other incentive to the vehicle occupants, to select therespective vendor. Likewise, a vendor can review its needs,specifications, requirements, or availabilities and respond with adisincentive to the vehicle occupants to select its nearby vendorlocation. The response is received by the occupant assistant, whichprovides the response to one or more of the occupants or assigns acompliance score to each of the responses (based on occupant preferencesand the attractiveness of the response to the needs, specifications orrequirements of the occupant(s)), filters the various responses based onthe assigned scores, and provides a subset of the responses to the oneor more occupants. The occupant assistant 904 can, at the request of theone or more occupants, automatically make a reservation with the vendor(e.g., reserve the table).

In a second example, the occupant assistant 904, in response to atrigger such as time-of-day, vehicle location, a vehicle being parked,or other stimulus, determines a current location of the vehicle,retrieves a selected occupant or composite profile, causes the mapdatabase manager 812 to search the map database 816 for specificinformation referenced in the selected occupant or composite profile,such as a restaurant, storefront, other vendor location, point ofinterest, and the like, within a defined spatial range of the vehicle,and, when a map feature matches the specific information, publishes, asa recommendation, rating, or preference of the occupant or group ofoccupants, via a social networking service to the occupant friends orfriends of each member of the group of occupants the located specificinformation. For example, the published information could be occupant Xlikes restaurant Y or occupant X is eating lunch at restaurant Y, andthe like. Such a message could be customized for each occupant X in theoccupant group and each friend Y of each occupant X.

In a third example, the occupant assistant 904 collects occupant- andvehicle-related information (including any of the information describedabove) and forwards the collected information to a vendor server, mapdatabase manager 812, and/or vehicle database manager 820. The vendorserver can push advertisements to the occupant(s) via the userinterface(s). The map database manager 812 or vehicle database manager820 can use the collected information to update a profile of theoccupant or composite profile of the occupant group, which is thenprovided to the occupant assistant for local storage as a profile 974.

In a fourth example, the occupant assistant 904 presents advertisementinformation, such as web pages and hyperlinks, from a vendor server 808or vehicle database manager 820 to an occupant(s), monitors the occupantor occupant group behavior, such as a request to update the displayednavigation information to reflect a vendor location associated with theadvertisement information or otherwise determines that the vehicle hastraveled to the vendor location; and provides the visit to the vendorlocation to the vehicle database manager 820. The vehicle databasemanager 820 can determine from the vendor server associated with thevisited vendor location that the occupant or a member of the occupantgroup has purchased goods or services. A referral fee, which can be apercentage of the transaction, a flat rate, or other basis, can be paidby the vendor to the entity operating the vehicle database manager. Insome applications, the vehicle database manager uses information in thevehicle database to identify the vehicle occupant or a member of theoccupant group as complying with stipulated criteria received from thevendor server (e.g., which criteria can be any of the occupant orvehicle information described above) and, when the occupant or occupantgroup is within a specified spatial range of a vendor locationassociated with the vendor server, alerts one or more of the occupant(s)to the vendor location or provides vendor generated advertisements tothe vehicle for presentation to the occupant(s) and, in exchangereceives a referral fee. Where the vendor location is in a mall, theoccupant portable computing device can be used by the occupant assistantto track occupant or occupant group member location while the vehicle isparked and one or more of the occupants is absent.

When multiple occupants are in the vehicle, the occupant assistant 904can blend profiles of the occupants to yield an aggregate or compositeprofile for use in any of the examples above. The composite profilerecognizes that a given occupant's behavior when the occupant is aloneis often different than the occupant's behavior when in a group. Thecomposite profile for the group contains, in the occupant identityfield, the identities of each of the occupants in the vehicle oroccupant group. The role field, which defines the role of eachindividual participant in the behavior of the group on a grouppreference-by-preference basis or universally across all grouppreferences, contains a role value for each of the identified occupants.The role value indicates the degree of influence the correspondingoccupant has over the behavior of the group. For example, a firstoccupant in the group has a first role value while a second occupant inthe group has a different second role value, which means that the firstand second occupants have different degrees of influence over the groupbehavior. The occupant having the superior role value has a greaterweighting assigned to that occupant's field values in each of variousgroup preference or predictive behavior fields. For a given field, thesum of all of the weighted values assigned to the group's occupantmembers is the aggregate value assigned to the field. By way of example,if a given field relates to preference for Italian food and first andsecond occupants are in the group, the value assigned to the field inthe composite profile is (first occupant's preference value for Italianfood)×(first occupant's role value)+(second occupant's preference valuefor Italian food)×(second occupant's role value)=group preference valuefor Italian food. When considering group preference for food type, thegroup food preference values for different food types are compared, withthe field having the highest (or lowest depending on the configuration)group food preference value being the food type to be used in therestaurant search and recommendation. As will be appreciated, otherapproaches can be employed, such as assigning a restaurant preferencefield rather than food type preference.

When any field in the profiles of the various group members contains oneor more conflicting values, a number of other different approaches canbe used to resolve the conflict. In one approach, the most frequentlyoccurring value for the field is given precedence for the entire carloadof occupants regardless of the respective role ranking of each occupant,e.g., most passengers or occupants in the vehicle prefer Mexican food, arestaurant having outside seating, and/or romantic movies. In anotherapproach, one occupant profile having a highest role ranking is givenprecedence over the profiles of the other occupants for the conflictingfield. In another approach, the field is given multiple, differentvalues, each of which can be the source of a stimulus or suggestion orrecommendation. The occupants are then empowered to decide amongstthemselves, what conflicting choice is to be selected. Other techniquescan be used to resolve conflicting fields.

In yet another approach, the intelligent assistant 904 or vehicledatabase manager constructs a composite profile based on observations ofvehicle behavior while the occupant group members are in a commonvehicle. The observed vehicle behavior is attributed to the group ratherthan to the operator. As the vehicle is operated with the occupant groupin the vehicle, the various group preference field values are populatedand/or updated.

In yet another approach, the behavior of a given occupant or group ofoccupants is predicted using one or more dynamic models, such aspredictive analytics (e.g., predictive models, descriptive models, anddecision models), among others. The approaches used to conductpredictive analytics include regression techniques, linear regressionmodels, discrete choice models, logistic regression, multinomiallogistic regression, probit regression, time series models, survival orduration analysis, classification and regression trees, multivariateadaptive regression splines, machine learning techniques, neuralnetworks, multilayer perception, radial basis functions, support vectormachines, Naïve Bayes, k-nearest neighbors, and geospatial predictivemodeling. One specific example is the use of plural Kalman filterssequenced by a Markov chain.

In yet another approach, the behavior of a given occupant or group ofoccupants is predicted using behavioral segmentation. Behavioralsegmentation divides the occupants of multiple vehicles into groups orclasses based on selected parameters of behavior, such as those setforth above. There are two broad set of methodologies for segmentation:namely objective (supervised) and lion-objective (unsupervised)segmentation methodologies. The most common techniques used for buildingan objective segmentation are CHAID and CRT. Each of these techniquesattempts to maximize the difference among segments with regards to thestated objective or target for segmentation, which are the selectedbehavior parameters. CHAID uses a chi square statistic while CRT usesGini impurity for the difference maximization. The most commontechniques for building non-objective segmentation are cluster analysisand K nearest neighbor techniques. Each of these techniques uses adistance measure (e.g. Euclidian distance, Manhattan distance, orMahalanobis distance). The distance measure maximizes the distancebetween the selected behavior parameters in the two segments.

In yet another approach, the behavior of a given occupant or group ofoccupants is predicted using occupant input on the selected parametersof behavior. The occupant input can be received by the user interface onboard the vehicle.

When a given occupant is included in multiple composite profiles when heor she is in different occupant groups, the role and preference fieldvalues of the various composite profiles can be used to predict thegiven occupant's role value and preference field values of a differentgroup of occupants containing different occupants besides the givenoccupant. This can be particularly true where the given occupant has ahigh or low role value consistently in the various composite values.

The operations of the various executable modules will now be discussedwith reference to FIGS. 9-10.

With reference to FIG. 9, the occupant assistant 904, in step 1000,detects a stimulus, such as any set forth above, and commences executionof the instructions.

In step 1004, the occupant assistant 904 determines from the automaticvehicle location system 908 the current geographical location of thevehicle 120.

In step 1008, the occupant assistant 904 collects vehicle-relatedinformation from the sensor connectivity manager 966. This informationcomprises, in addition to the information set forth above, whether thevehicle is in park or in gear (e.g., motion), whether one or moreoccupants have left the vehicle (e.g. by sensing door openings orclosings, by processing an image of the vehicle interior to detect anabsent occupant, detecting a change of sensed weight by a seat weightsensor or change of safety belt setting (e.g., open or closed), and thelike.

In step 1012, the occupant assistant 904 collects occupant-relatedinformation, such as the information set forth above. This includes, forexample, the identities of the vehicle occupants, the roles of eachidentified occupant (e.g., driver or passenger), a current activity ofeach occupant (e.g., operating vehicle, operating portable computingdevice, interacting with an on board vehicle user interface, and thelike), content provided to each identified occupant since the last datacollection (e.g., Internet search or browsing session content, such asweb pages), and the like.

In step 1016, the occupant assistant 904, depending on the embodiment,provides the collected information to the map database manager, vendorserver(s), or vehicle database manager to update a set ofoccupant-related or vehicle-related data structures maintained thereby.

In step 1020, the occupant assistant 908 optionally updates locallystored occupant profiles 974 or receives updated occupant and compositeprofiles from the vehicle database manager.

With reference to FIG. 10, the occupant assistant 904, in step 1100,detects a stimulus, such as any set forth above and receipt of a requestfrom a vendor server, map database manager, or vehicle database manager,and commences execution of the instructions.

In step 1104, the occupant assistant 904 determines from the automaticvehicle location system 908 the current geographical location of thevehicle 120 and, from sensed user data 916, the current vehicle-relatedand occupant-related information.

In step 1108, the occupant assistant 904 retrieves selected occupant orcomposite profile(s), typically for each occupant in the vehicle.

In step 1112, the occupant assistant 904 causes the map database managerto search the map database for specific information in the occupant orcomposite profile(s). The data structures searched can be auxiliary dataembedded in the map information. The type of specific information to besearched depends on the nature of the stimulus. If the stimulus isdetection of a habitual or predetermined time to consume breakfast,lunch, or dinner, the occupant assistant selects food preference orpreferred restaurants fields. If the stimulus is receipt of a requestfrom a vendor server or vehicle database manager for a request toprovide potential advertisement information or recommendation orsuggestion to visit a vendor, the fields selected relate to conditionsset forth in the request defining preconditions for the potentialadvertisement or recommendation or suggestion (e.g., occupant age, sex,socioeconomic status, interaction history of occupant with the vendor,and the like).

In step 1116, the occupant assistant 904, depending on the nature of thestimuli and results of search, applies rules defining what, if any,actions are to be undertaken. Actions include, for example, proposingone or more destinations or waypoints (such as a restaurant, store,other vendor location, point of interest, etc.) in navigationinformation provided to an occupant, such as a driver, or group ofoccupants via the user interface 920; publishing occupant- orvehicle-related information, via a social network, to associated orselected associates of the each of the occupant(s); collecting occupant-and vehicle-related information (including any of the informationdescribed above) and forwarding the collected information to a vendorserver, map database manager 812, and/or vehicle database manager 820;and presenting advertisement information, such as web pages andhyperlinks, from a vendor server 808 or vehicle database manager 820 toan occupant.

With reference to FIG. 11, the vehicle database manager 820, in step1200, detects a stimulus, such as for example any of the stimulus setforth above, a request for advertising targets received from a vendorserver, a request for vendor information received from the occupantassistant 904, and other stimuli, and commences execution of theinstructions.

In step 1204, the vehicle database manager determines from the vehicledatabase 824 and/or from the automatic vehicle location system 908 ofthe vehicle 120 the current geographical location of the vehicle 120 andthe current vehicle-related and occupant-related information, includingindividual vehicle occupant profiles and/or a composite vehicle occupantprofile, depending on the application, or vendor profiles depending onwhether the request is received from a vendor server or occupantassistant.

In step 1208, the vehicle database manager 820 receives search criteriafrom one or more of the vendor server(s) 808A-N or occupant assistant.

In step 1212, the vehicle database manager 820 searches the vehiclelocation and vehicle-related and occupant-related information forqualifying occupant and/or composite profile(s) when the request is froma vendor server or one or more vendor profiles for qualifying vendorsand qualifying vendor locations when the request is from the occupantassistant. “Qualifying” is deemed to exist when a search targetsatisfies the search criteria specified by the vendor or occupantassistant, as the case may be.

In step 1216, the vehicle database manager pushes advertising contentfrom the requesting vendor server to qualifying or selected vehicles orfrom qualifying vendor server(s) to the requesting vehicle. Whenappropriate, the vehicle database manager receives a payment from thevendor server corresponding to the advertising content for pushing theadvertising content to the vehicle, such payment terms discussed abovein more detail.

With reference to FIG. 12, the logical instructions are executed by anarithmetic/logic unit (“ALU”), which performs mathematical operations,such as addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division, machineinstructions, an address bus (that sends an address to memory), a databus (that can send data to memory or receive data from memory), a readand write line to tell the memory whether to set or get the addressedlocation, a clock line that enables a clock pulse to sequence theprocessor, and a reset line that resets the program counter to zero oranother value and restarts execution. The arithmetic/logic unit can be afloating point processor that performs operations on floating pointnumbers. The occupant assistant 904, vehicle database manager 820,and/or map database manager 812 further includes first, second, andthird registers that are typically configured from flip-flops, anaddress latch, a program counter (which can increment by “1” and resetto “0”), a test register to hold values from comparisons performed inthe arithmetic/logic unit (such as comparisons in steps 1020, 1112,1116, and 1212), plural tri-state buffers to pass a “1” or “0” ordisconnect its output (thereby allowing multiple outputs to connect to awire but only one of them to actually drive a “1” or “0” into the line),and an instruction register and decoder to control other components.Control lines, in the occupant assistant 904, vehicle database manager820, and/or map database manager 812, from the instruction decoder can:command the first register to latch the value currently on the data bus,command the second register to latch the value currently on the databus, command the third register to latch the value currently output bythe ALU, command the program counter register to latch the valuecurrently on the data bus, command the address register to latch thevalue currently on the data bus, command the instruction register tolatch the value currently on the data bus, command the program counterto increment, command the program counter to reset to zero, activate anyof the plural tri-state buffers (plural separate lines), command the ALUwhat operation to perform, command the test register to latch the ALU'stest bits, activate the read line, and activate the write line. Bitsfrom the test register and clock line as well as the bits from theinstruction register come into the instruction decoder. Hardware similaror identical to that of FIG. 12 is in each of the occupant assistant904, vehicle database manager 820 and/or map database manager 812 forexecuting the instructions of FIGS. 9-11. The ALU executes instructionsfor a random or pseudo-random number generation algorithm and generatesthe recipient identifier using the appropriate seed values.

Any of the steps, functions, and operations discussed herein can beperformed continuously and automatically.

The exemplary systems and methods of this disclosure have been describedin relation to vehicle systems and electric vehicles. However, to avoidunnecessarily obscuring the present disclosure, the precedingdescription omits a number of known structures and devices. Thisomission is not to be construed as a limitation of the scope of theclaimed disclosure. Specific details are set forth to provide anunderstanding of the present disclosure. It should, however, beappreciated that the present disclosure may be practiced in a variety ofways beyond the specific detail set forth herein.

Furthermore, while the exemplary embodiments illustrated herein show thevarious components of the system collocated, certain components of thesystem can be located remotely, at distant portions of a distributednetwork, such as a LAN and/or the Internet, or within a dedicatedsystem. Thus, it should be appreciated, that the components of thesystem can be combined into one or more devices, such as a server,communication device, or collocated on a particular node of adistributed network, such as an analog and/or digital telecommunicationsnetwork, a packet-switched network, or a circuit-switched network. Itwill be appreciated from the preceding description, and for reasons ofcomputational efficiency, that the components of the system can bearranged at any location within a distributed network of componentswithout affecting the operation of the system.

Furthermore, it should be appreciated that the various links connectingthe elements can be wired or wireless links, or any combination thereof,or any other known or later developed element(s) that is capable ofsupplying and/or communicating data to and from the connected elements.These wired or wireless links can also be secure links and may becapable of communicating encrypted information. Transmission media usedas links, for example, can be any suitable carrier for electricalsignals, including coaxial cables, copper wire, and fiber optics, andmay take the form of acoustic or light waves, such as those generatedduring radio-wave and infra-red data communications.

While the flowcharts have been discussed and illustrated in relation toa particular sequence of events, it should be appreciated that changes,additions, and omissions to this sequence can occur without materiallyaffecting the operation of the disclosed embodiments, configuration, andaspects.

A number of variations and modifications of the disclosure can be used.It would be possible to provide for some features of the disclosurewithout providing others.

In yet another embodiment, the systems and methods of this disclosurecan be implemented in conjunction with a special purpose computer, aprogrammed microprocessor or microcontroller and peripheral integratedcircuit element(s), an ASIC or other integrated circuit, a digitalsignal processor, a hard-wired electronic or logic circuit such asdiscrete element circuit, a programmable logic device or gate array suchas PLD, PLA, FPGA, PAL, special purpose computer, any comparable means,or the like. In general, any device(s) or means capable of implementingthe methodology illustrated herein can be used to implement the variousaspects of this disclosure. Exemplary hardware that can be used for thepresent disclosure includes computers, handheld devices, telephones(e.g., cellular, Internet enabled, digital, analog, hybrids, andothers), and other hardware known in the art. Some of these devicesinclude processors (e.g., a single or multiple microprocessors), memory,nonvolatile storage, input devices, and output devices. Furthermore,alternative software implementations including, but not limited to,distributed processing or component/object distributed processing,parallel processing, or virtual machine processing can also beconstructed to implement the methods described herein.

In yet another embodiment, the disclosed methods may be readilyimplemented in conjunction with software using object or object-orientedsoftware development environments that provide portable source code thatcan be used on a variety of computer or workstation platforms.Alternatively, the disclosed system may be implemented partially orfully in hardware using standard logic circuits or VLSI design. Whethersoftware or hardware is used to implement the systems in accordance withthis disclosure is dependent on the speed and/or efficiency requirementsof the system, the particular function, and the particular software orhardware systems or microprocessor or microcomputer systems beingutilized.

In yet another embodiment, the disclosed methods may be partiallyimplemented in software that can be stored on a storage medium, executedon programmed general-purpose computer with the cooperation of acontroller and memory, a special purpose computer, a microprocessor, orthe like. In these instances, the systems and methods of this disclosurecan be implemented as a program embedded on a personal computer such asan applet, JAVA® or CGI script, as a resource residing on a server orcomputer workstation, as a routine embedded in a dedicated measurementsystem, system component, or the like. The system can also beimplemented by physically incorporating the system and/or method into asoftware and/or hardware system.

Although the present disclosure describes components and functionsimplemented in the embodiments with reference to particular standardsand protocols, the disclosure is not limited to such standards andprotocols. Other similar standards and protocols not mentioned hereinare in existence and are considered to be included in the presentdisclosure. Moreover, the standards and protocols mentioned herein andother similar standards and protocols not mentioned herein areperiodically superseded by faster or more effective equivalents havingessentially the same functions. Such replacement standards and protocolshaving the same functions are considered equivalents included in thepresent disclosure.

The present disclosure, in various embodiments, configurations, andaspects, includes components, methods, processes, systems and/orapparatus substantially as depicted and described herein, includingvarious embodiments, subcombinations, and subsets thereof. Those ofskill in the art will understand how to make and use the systems andmethods disclosed herein after understanding the present disclosure. Thepresent disclosure, in various embodiments, configurations, and aspects,includes providing devices and processes in the absence of items notdepicted and/or described herein or in various embodiments,configurations, or aspects hereof, including in the absence of suchitems as may have been used in previous devices or processes, e.g., forimproving performance, achieving ease, and/or reducing cost ofimplementation.

The foregoing discussion of the disclosure has been presented forpurposes of illustration and description. The foregoing is not intendedto limit the disclosure to the form or forms disclosed herein. In theforegoing Detailed Description for example, various features of thedisclosure are grouped together in one or more embodiments,configurations, or aspects for the purpose of streamlining thedisclosure. The features of the embodiments, configurations, or aspectsof the disclosure may be combined in alternate embodiments,configurations, or aspects other than those discussed above. This methodof disclosure is not to be interpreted as reflecting an intention thatthe claimed disclosure requires more features than are expressly recitedin each claim. Rather, as the following claims reflect, inventiveaspects lie in less than all features of a single foregoing disclosedembodiment, configuration, or aspect. Thus, the following claims arehereby incorporated into this Detailed Description, with each claimstanding on its own as a separate preferred embodiment of thedisclosure.

Moreover, though the description of the disclosure has includeddescription of one or more embodiments, configurations, or aspects andcertain variations and modifications, other variations, combinations,and modifications are within the scope of the disclosure, e.g., as maybe within the skill and knowledge of those in the art, afterunderstanding the present disclosure. It is intended to obtain rights,which include alternative embodiments, configurations, or aspects to theextent permitted, including alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalentstructures, functions, ranges, or steps to those claimed, whether or notsuch alternate, interchangeable and/or equivalent structures, functions,ranges, or steps are disclosed herein, and without intending to publiclydedicate any patentable subject matter.

Embodiments include a vehicle comprising:

a vehicle interior for receiving one or more occupants;

a powertrain to transmit power from a power source to an electric motorto propel the vehicle;

a user interface to receive input from an occupant and provide output tothe occupant;

a plurality of sensors to sense information related to occupants;

an automatic vehicle location system to determine a current spatiallocation of the vehicle;

a computer readable medium to store a composite occupant profile; and

a microprocessor, coupled to the user interface, plurality of sensors,automatic vehicle location system, and computer readable medium, to:

determine that the vehicle interior comprises plural occupants;

identify the plural occupants;

based on the driving behavior of the vehicle, create a compositeoccupant profile associated with the group of plural occupants, thecomposite occupant profile comprising the identities of the pluraloccupants and group preferences for various vendor products or services;and

based on the composite occupant profile and received inputs from theuser interface, automatic vehicle location system, and plurality ofsensors, one or more of: (a) propose one or more vendor products orservices for the group of occupants; (b) publish the one or more vendorproducts or services selected by the group of occupants, via a socialnetwork, to associated or selected associates of one or more of theoccupants in the group; and (c) present advertisement information from avendor server associated with the proposed or selected one or morevendor products or services to one or more of the occupants in thegroup.

Embodiments include a method that includes the steps:

determining, by a microprocessor, that the vehicle interior comprisesplural occupants;

identifying, by the microprocessor, the plural occupants;

based on the driving behavior of the vehicle, creating, by themicroprocessor, a composite occupant profile associated with the groupof plural occupants, the composite occupant profile comprising theidentities of the plural occupants and group preferences for variousvendor products or services; and

based on the composite occupant profile and received inputs from a userinterface, an automatic vehicle location system, and a plurality ofsensors in the vehicle, the microprocessor one or more of: (a) proposingone or more vendor products or services for the group of occupants; (b)publishing the one or more vendor products or services selected by thegroup of occupants, via a social network, to associated or selectedassociates of one or more of the occupants in the group; and (c)presenting advertisement information from a vendor server associatedwith the proposed or selected one or more vendor products or services toone or more of the occupants in the group.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include one or more of: thedriving behavior being one or more of current or historical user drivingbehavior, historical route driven by the vehicle, destination of thevehicle, and waypoints of the vehicle; the driving behavior of thevehicle being attributed to the group of occupants; the plurality ofsensors comprising a plurality of: a camera to capture images of theoccupants in the vehicle interior, a camera to capture images of objectsoutside the vehicle, a seat belt sensor to determine a seat beltsetting, a seat weight sensor to determine a weight of a seatedoccupant, a microphone to capture speech of the plurality of occupants,and a portable computing device of one or more of the occupants to senseinteraction of the one or more of the occupants with the portablecomputing device; and the composite profile comprising, for eachoccupant in the group, the occupant's identity and the occupant's age orthe occupant's biometric information and, for the group, visitationand/or transaction history with one or more vendors.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the composite profilecomprising, for each occupant in the occupant group, a role valueindicating a role the corresponding occupant plays in a group decision.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include one or more of: themicroprocessor proposing one or more vendor products or services for thegroup of occupants and the proposed one or more vendor products beingproposed based on a number of group members, ages of the group members,and sexes of the group members and a need, specification, oravailability of a product or service offered by a vendor.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the microprocessorpublishing the one or more vendor products or services selected by thegroup of occupants, via a social network, to associated or selectedassociates of one or more of the occupants in the group.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the microprocessorpresenting advertisement information from a vendor server associatedwith the proposed or selected one or more vendor products or services toone or more of the occupants in the group and the advertisementinformation being associated with a vendor product or service locatedwithin a selected spatial range of a current vehicle location.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the composite profilebeing created by combining like preference field values in theindividual profiles of the occupants in the group using one or more of arole value for each occupant in the group for that preference field, anunweighted average of the field values of the group occupants for aselected preference, a mode of the field values of the group occupantsfor a selected preference, and a median of the field values of the groupoccupants for a selected preference.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the composite profilebeing created by combining like preference field values in theindividual profiles of the occupants in the group using predictiveanalytics.

Embodiments include a method that includes the steps:

receiving, by a computer server, a request to provide advertisinginformation to a vehicle;

determining, by the computer server, a current location of pluralvehicles comprising the vehicle and current vehicle related andoccupant-related information associated with occupants of the pluralityof vehicles;

receiving, by the computer server, search criteria from a vendor serveror the vehicle;

searching, by the computer server and in accordance with the searchcriteria, the determined current locations and the vehicle-related andoccupant-related information associated with the occupants of theplurality of vehicles or plural vendor profiles including vendorlocations; and

based on the searching, providing, by the computer server, to thevehicle selected advertising content responsive to the search criteria.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the search criteriabeings received from the vendor server and the computer server searchingthe determined current locations and the vehicle-related andoccupant-related information to determine the vehicles in the pluralityof vehicles to receive the advertising content from the vendor serverand not receive the advertising content from the vendor server.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the search criteriabeing received from the vehicle and the computer server searching theplural vendor profiles to determine vendor locations in spatialproximity to the vehicle and meeting a need, specification orrequirement of the vehicle occupants and wherein the advertising contentis associated with the determined vendor locations.

Aspects of the above vehicle or method can include the computer servercausing payment to be made by or an invoice to be received from a vendorserver providing the advertising content in exchange for the computerserver providing the advertising content to the vehicle.

Any one or more of the aspects/embodiments as substantially disclosedherein.

Any one or more of the aspects/embodiments as substantially disclosedherein optionally in combination with any one or more otheraspects/embodiments as substantially disclosed herein.

One or means adapted to perform any one or more of the aboveaspects/embodiments as substantially disclosed herein.

The phrases “at least one,” “one or more,” “or,” and “and/or” areopen-ended expressions that are both conjunctive and disjunctive inoperation. For example, each of the expressions “at least one of A, Band C,” “at least one of A, B, or C,” “one or more of A, B, and C,” “oneor more of A, B, or C,” “A, B, and/or C,” and “A, B, or C” means Aalone, B alone, C alone, A and B together, A and C together, B and Ctogether, or A, B and C together.

The term “a” or “an” entity refers to one or more of that entity. Assuch, the terms “a” (or “an”), “one or more,” and “at least one” can beused interchangeably herein. It is also to be noted that the terms“comprising,” “including,” and “having” can be used interchangeably.

The term “automatic” and variations thereof, as used herein, refers toany process or operation, which is typically continuous orsemi-continuous, done without material human input when the process oroperation is performed. However, a process or operation can beautomatic, even though performance of the process or operation usesmaterial or immaterial human input, if the input is received beforeperformance of the process or operation. Human input is deemed to bematerial if such input influences how the process or operation will beperformed. Human input that consents to the performance of the processor operation is not deemed to be “material.”

Aspects of the present disclosure may take the form of an embodimentthat is entirely hardware, an embodiment that is entirely software(including firmware, resident software, micro-code, etc.) or anembodiment combining software and hardware aspects that may allgenerally be referred to herein as a “circuit,” “module,” or “system.”Any combination of one or more computer-readable medium(s) may beutilized. The computer-readable medium may be a computer-readable signalmedium or a computer-readable storage medium.

A computer-readable storage medium may be, for example, but not limitedto, an electronic, magnetic, optical, electromagnetic, infrared, orsemiconductor system, apparatus, or device, or any suitable combinationof the foregoing. More specific examples (a non-exhaustive list) of thecomputer-readable storage medium would include the following: anelectrical connection having one or more wires, a portable computerdiskette, a hard disk, a random access memory (RAM), a read-only memory(ROM), an erasable programmable read-only memory (EPROM or Flashmemory), an optical fiber, a portable compact disc read-only memory(CD-ROM), an optical storage device, a magnetic storage device, or anysuitable combination of the foregoing. In the context of this document,a computer-readable storage medium may be any tangible medium that cancontain or store a program for use by or in connection with aninstruction execution system, apparatus, or device.

A computer-readable signal medium may include a propagated data signalwith computer-readable program code embodied therein, for example, inbaseband or as part of a carrier wave. Such a propagated signal may takeany of a variety of forms, including, but not limited to,electro-magnetic, optical, or any suitable combination thereof. Acomputer-readable signal medium may be any computer-readable medium thatis not a computer-readable storage medium and that can communicate,propagate, or transport a program for use by or in connection with aninstruction execution system, apparatus, or device. Program codeembodied on a computer-readable medium may be transmitted using anyappropriate medium, including, but not limited to, wireless, wireline,optical fiber cable, RF, etc., or any suitable combination of theforegoing.

The terms “determine,” “calculate,” “compute,” and variations thereof,as used herein, are used interchangeably and include any type ofmethodology, process, mathematical operation or technique.

The term “electric vehicle” (EV), also referred to herein as an electricdrive vehicle, may use one or more electric motors or traction motorsfor propulsion. An electric vehicle may be powered through a collectorsystem by electricity from off-vehicle sources, or may be self-containedwith a battery or generator to convert fuel to electricity. An electricvehicle generally includes a rechargeable electricity storage system(RESS) (also called Full Electric Vehicles (FEV)). Power storage methodsmay include: chemical energy stored on the vehicle in on-board batteries(e.g., battery electric vehicle or BEV), on board kinetic energy storage(e.g., flywheels), and/or static energy (e.g., by on-board double-layercapacitors). Batteries, electric double-layer capacitors, and flywheelenergy storage may be forms of rechargeable on-board electrical storage.

The term “hybrid electric vehicle” refers to a vehicle that may combinea conventional (usually fossil fuel-powered) powertrain with some formof electric propulsion. Most hybrid electric vehicles combine aconventional internal combustion engine (ICE) propulsion system with anelectric propulsion system (hybrid vehicle drivetrain). In parallelhybrids, the ICE and the electric motor are both connected to themechanical transmission and can simultaneously transmit power to drivethe wheels, usually through a conventional transmission. In serieshybrids, only the electric motor drives the drivetrain, and a smallerICE works as a generator to power the electric motor or to recharge thebatteries. Power-split hybrids combine series and parallelcharacteristics. A full hybrid, sometimes also called a strong hybrid,is a vehicle that can run on just the engine, just the batteries, or acombination of both. A mid hybrid is a vehicle that cannot be drivensolely on its electric motor, because the electric motor does not haveenough power to propel the vehicle on its own.

The term “rechargeable electric vehicle” or “REV” refers to a vehiclewith on board rechargeable energy storage, including electric vehiclesand hybrid electric vehicles.

What is claimed is:
 1. A vehicle, comprising: a vehicle interior forreceiving one or more occupants; a powertrain to transmit power from apower source to an electric motor to propel the vehicle; a userinterface to receive input from an occupant and provide output to theoccupant; a plurality of sensors to sense information related tooccupants; an automatic vehicle location system to determine a currentspatial location of the vehicle; a computer readable medium to store acomposite occupant profile; and a microprocessor, coupled to the userinterface, plurality of sensors, automatic vehicle location system, andcomputer readable medium, to: determine that the vehicle interiorcomprises a group of plural occupants; identify each occupant of thegroup of plural occupants; based on individual profiles of the group ofplural occupants, create a composite occupant profile that representsthe group of plural occupants, the composite occupant profile comprisingan identity of each occupant of the group of plural occupants and grouppreferences for various vendor products or services, wherein eachoccupant of the group of plural occupants has a corresponding individualoccupant profile, each individual occupant profile comprising individualpreference values, wherein the composite occupant profile and the grouppreferences are created by combining, for a selected preference, apreference value for the selected preference retrieved from theindividual preference values for each occupant using one or more of arole value for each occupant of the group of plural occupants, anunweighted average of the individual preference values of each occupantof the group of plural occupants for the selected preference, a mode ofthe individual preference values of each occupant of the group of pluraloccupants for the selected preference, and a median of the individualpreference values of each occupant of the group of plural occupants forthe selected preference; and based on the composite occupant profile andreceived inputs from the user interface, automatic vehicle locationsystem, and plurality of sensors, one or more of: (a) propose one ormore vendor products or services for the group of plural occupants; (b)publish the one or more vendor products or services selected by thegroup of plural occupants, via a social network, to associated orselected associates of one or more of the occupants in the group ofplural occupants; and (c) present advertisement information from avendor server associated with the proposed or selected one or morevendor products or services to one or more of the occupants in the groupof plural occupants.
 2. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the compositeoccupant profile comprises plural preference fields, wherein apreference value of at least one of the plural preference fields in thecomposite occupant profile is based on a preference value in anindividual occupant profile of an occupant of a different vehicle andnot currently an occupant of the vehicle, wherein creating the compositeoccupant profile is based on a driving behavior of the vehicle, whereinthe driving behavior is one or more of current or historical userdriving behavior, historical route driven by the vehicle, destination ofthe vehicle, and waypoints of the vehicle, wherein the driving behaviorof the vehicle is attributed to the group of plural occupants, whereinthe plurality of sensors comprise a plurality of: a camera to captureimages of the occupants in the vehicle interior, a camera to captureimages of objects outside the vehicle, a seat belt sensor to determine aseat belt setting, a seat weight sensor to determine a weight of aseated occupant, a microphone to capture speech of the group of pluraloccupants, and a portable computing device of at least one of the groupof plural occupants to sense interaction of the at least one of thegroup of plural occupants with the portable computing device, andwherein the composite occupant profile comprises, for each occupant ofthe group of plural occupants, an age or biometric information for eachoccupant and, for the group of plural occupants, visitation and/ortransaction history with one or more vendors.
 3. The vehicle of claim 1,wherein the microprocessor provides information in the compositeoccupant profile to multiple vendor servers of multiple vendors, whereinthe composite occupant profile comprises, for each occupant in the groupof plural occupants the role value indicating a role a correspondingoccupant plays in a group decision, each occupant of the group of pluraloccupants having a different role value, wherein, in response toproviding the information, the microprocessor receives multiple vendorresponses from the multiple vendors, assigns a compliance score to eachof the multiple vendor responses, the compliance score indicating adegree of compliance of a respective vendor response with one or more ofan occupant preference and an attractiveness of the respective vendorresponse to a need, specification, or requirement of the compositeoccupant profile, filters the multiple vendor responses based on theassigned compliance scores, and provides a subset of the multiple vendorresponses to at least one occupant of the group of plural occupants. 4.The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the microprocessor directly orindirectly provides vehicle occupant information in the compositeoccupant profile and current vehicle location to the vendor server,wherein the microprocessor proposes one or more vendor products orservices for the group of plural occupants, wherein the microprocessorprovides to an occupant of the group of plural occupants a plurality ofvendor hours of operation, available product and/or service types,available product and/or service prices, available product and/orservice specifications or requirements, and geographical location of arespective vendor, wherein the microprocessor provides to the occupant ageographic data file comprising the geographic location of therespective vendor, wherein the plurality of vendor hours of operation,available product and/or service types, available product and/or serviceprices, available product and/or service specifications or requirements,and geographical location of the respective vendor are cross-referencedby a function-specific referencing table and/or generic referencefeatures or attributes of the geographic data file, and wherein theproposed one or more vendor products is proposed based on a number ofmembers in the group of plural occupants, ages of the members in thegroup of plural occupants, and sexes of the members in the group ofplural occupants and a need, specification, or availability of a productor service offered by a vendor.
 5. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein themicroprocessor publishes the one or more vendor products or servicesselected by the group of plural occupants, via the social network, toassociated or selected associates of one or more of the occupants in thegroup of plural occupants and the publication comprises a plurality ofvendor hours of operation, available product and/or service types,available product and/or service prices, available product and/orservice specifications or requirements, and geographical location of arespective vendor.
 6. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the microprocessordirectly or indirectly provides vehicle occupant information in thecomposite occupant profile and current vehicle location to the vendorserver, wherein the microprocessor presents advertisement informationfrom the vendor server associated with the proposed or selected one ormore vendor products or services to one or more of the occupants in thegroup of plural occupants, wherein the microprocessor provides to anoccupant a plurality of vendor hours of operation, available productand/or service types, available product and/or service prices, availableproduct and/or service specifications or requirements, and geographicallocation of a respective vendor, wherein the microprocessor provides tothe occupant a geographic data file comprising the geographic locationof the respective vendor, wherein the plurality of vendor hours ofoperation, available product and/or service types, available productand/or service prices, available product and/or service specificationsor requirements, and geographical location of the respective vendor arecross-referenced by a function-specific referencing table and/or genericreference features or attributes of the geographic data file, andwherein the advertisement information is associated with a vendorproduct or service located within a selected spatial range of a currentvehicle location.
 7. The vehicle of claim 1, wherein the compositeoccupant profile comprises plural preference fields, wherein, when themicroprocessor determines that a selected preference field in eachindividual occupant profile of two or more occupants comprise of thegroup of plural occupants comprises a conflicting value, themicroprocessor uses, for the selected preference field value in thecomposite occupant profile, one or more of a most frequently occurringvalue for the selected preference, the value of the selected preferencefield in the individual occupant profile having a highest role rankingand multiple, different values in the individual occupant profiles, eachof which is a source of a stimulus or suggestion or recommendation tothe two or more occupants of the group of plural occupants.
 8. Thevehicle of claim 1, wherein the composite profile is created bycombining like preference field values in the individual occupantprofiles of the group of plural occupants using one or more of (i)predictive analytics comprising one or more of a regression technique,linear regression model, discrete choice model, logistic regression,multinomial logistic regression, probit regression, time series model,survival or duration analysis, classification and regression tree,multivariate adaptive regression spline, machine learning technique,neural network, multilayer perception, radial basis function, supportvector machine, Nave Bayes, k-nearest neighbor, and geospatialpredictive modeling and (ii) behavioral segmentation, in which themicroprocessor divides occupants of multiple different vehicles intogroups or classes based on selected parameters of behavior using one ormore of an objective and non-objective segmentation methodology tomaximize a difference among segments with regards to each selectedbehavior parameter.
 9. A method, comprising: determining, by amicroprocessor, that a vehicle interior comprises a group of pluraloccupants; identifying, by the microprocessor, each occupant of thegroup of plural occupants; based on individual profiles of the group ofplural occupants, creating, by the microprocessor, a composite occupantprofile that represents the group of plural occupants, the compositeoccupant profile comprising an identity of each occupant of the group ofplural occupants and group preferences for various vendor products orservices, wherein each occupant of the group of plural occupants has acorresponding individual occupant profile, each individual occupantprofile comprising individual preference values, wherein the compositeoccupant profile and the group preferences are created by combining, fora selected preference, a preference value for the selected preferenceretrieved from the individual preference values for each occupant usingone or more of a role value for each occupant of the group of pluraloccupants, an unweighted average of the individual preference values ofeach occupant of the group of plural occupants for the selectedpreference, a mode of the individual preference values of each occupantof the group of plural occupants for the selected preference, and amedian of the individual preference values of each occupant of the groupof plural occupants for the selected preference; and based on thecomposite occupant profile and received inputs from a user interface, anautomatic vehicle location system, and a plurality of sensors in thevehicle, one or more of: (a) proposing, by the microprocessor, one ormore vendor products or services for the group of plural occupants; (b)publishing, by the microprocessor, the one or more vendor products orservices selected by the group of plural occupants, via a socialnetwork, to associated or selected associates of one or more of theoccupants in the group; and (c) presenting, by the microprocessor,advertisement information from a vendor server associated with theproposed or selected one or more vendor products or services to one ormore of the occupants in the group of plural occupants.
 10. The methodof claim 9, wherein the composite occupant profile comprises pluralpreference fields, wherein a preference value of at least one of theplural preference fields in the composite occupant profile is based on apreference value in an individual occupant profile of an occupant of adifferent vehicle and not currently an occupant of the vehicle, whereincreating the composite occupant profile is based on a driving behaviorof the vehicle, wherein the driving behavior is one or more of currentor historical user driving behavior, historical route driven by thevehicle, destination of the vehicle, and waypoints of the vehicle,wherein the driving behavior of the vehicle is attributed to the groupof plural occupants, wherein the plurality of sensors comprise aplurality of: a camera to capture images of the occupants in the vehicleinterior, a camera to capture images of objects outside the vehicle, aseat belt sensor to determine a seat belt setting, a seat weight sensorto determine a weight of a seated occupant, a microphone to capturespeech of the group of plural occupants, and a portable computing deviceof at least one of the group of plural occupants to sense interaction ofthe at least one of the group of plural occupants with the portablecomputing device, and wherein the composite occupant profile comprises,for each occupant of the group of plural occupants, an age or biometricinformation for each occupant and, for the group of plural occupants,visitation and/or transaction history with one or more vendors.
 11. Themethod of claim 9, further comprising: providing, by the microprocessor,information in the composite occupant profile to multiple vendor serversof multiple vendors, wherein the composite occupant profile comprises,for each occupant in the group of plural occupants, the role valueindicating a role a corresponding occupant plays in a group decision,each occupant of the group of plural occupants having a different rolevalue; receiving, by the microprocessor and in response to providing theinformation, multiple vendor responses from the multiple; assigning, bythe microprocessor, a compliance score to each of the multiple vendorresponses received, the compliance score indicating a degree ofcompliance of the respective vendor response with one or more of anoccupant preference and an attractiveness of the respective vendorresponse to a need, specification or requirement of the compositeoccupant profile; filtering, by the microprocessor, the multiple vendorresponses based on the assigned compliance scores; and providing, by themicroprocessor and based on the filtering, a subset of the multiplevendor responses to at least one occupant of the group of pluraloccupants.
 12. The method of claim 9, wherein the microprocessordirectly or indirectly provides vehicle occupant information in thecomposite occupant profile and current vehicle location to the vendorserver, wherein the microprocessor proposes one or more vendor productsor services for the group of plural occupants, wherein themicroprocessor provides to an occupant of the group of plural occupantsa plurality of vendor hours of operation, available product and/orservice types, available product and/or service prices, availableproduct and/or service specifications or requirements, and geographicallocation of a respective vendor, wherein the microprocessor provides tothe occupant a geographic data file comprising the geographic locationof the respective vendor, wherein the plurality of vendor hours ofoperation, available product and/or service types, available productand/or service prices, available product and/or service specificationsor requirements, and geographical location of the respective vendor arecross-referenced by a function-specific referencing table and/or genericreference features or attributes of the geographic data file, andwherein the proposed one or more vendor products is proposed based on anumber of members in the group of plural occupants, ages of the membersin the group of plural occupants, and sexes of the members in the groupof plural occupants and a need, specification, or availability of aproduct or service offered by a vendor.
 13. The method of claim 9,further comprising: publishing, by the microprocessor, the one or morevendor products or services selected by the group of plural occupants,via the social network, to associated or selected associates of one ormore of the occupants in the group of plural occupants and thepublication comprises a plurality of vendor hours of operation,available product and/or service types, available product and/or serviceprices, available product and/or service specifications or requirements,and geographical location of a respective vendor.
 14. The method ofclaim 9, further comprising: providing, by the microprocessor directlyor indirectly, vehicle occupant information in the composite occupantprofile and current vehicle location to the vendor server; presenting,by the microprocessor, advertisement information from the vendor serverassociated with the proposed or selected one or more vendor products orservices to one or more of the occupants in the group of pluraloccupants; providing, by the microprocessor, to an occupant a pluralityof vendor hours of operation, available product and/or service types,available product and/or service prices, available product and/orservice specifications or requirements, and geographical location of arespective vendor; and providing, by the microprocessor, to the occupanta geographic data file comprising the geographic location of therespective vendor, wherein the plurality of vendor hours of operation,available product and/or service types, available product and/or serviceprices, available product and/or service specifications or requirements,and geographical location of the respective vendor are cross-referencedby a function-specific referencing table and/or generic referencefeatures or attributes of the geographic data file, and wherein theadvertisement information is associated with a vendor product or servicelocated within a selected spatial range of a current vehicle location.15. The method of claim 9, further comprising: determining, by themicroprocessor, that a selected preference field in each individualoccupant profile of two or more occupants of the group of pluraloccupants comprises a conflicting value; using, by the microprocessor,for the selected preference field value in the composite occupantprofile, one or more of a most frequently occurring value for theselected preference, the value of the selected preference in theindividual occupant profile having a highest role ranking and multiple,different values in the individual occupant profiles, each of which is asource of a stimulus or suggestion or recommendation to the two or moreoccupants of the group of plural occupants.
 16. The method of claim 9,wherein the composite occupant profile is created by the microprocessorcombining like preference field values in the individual occupantprofiles of the group of plural occupants using one or more of (i)predictive analytics comprising one or more of a regression technique,linear regression model, discrete choice model, logistic regression,multinomial logistic regression, probit regression, time series model,survival or duration analysis, classification and regression tree,multivariate adaptive regression spline, machine learning technique,neural network, multilayer perception, radial basis function, supportvector machine, Naïve Bayes, k-nearest neighbor, and geospatialpredictive modeling and (ii) behavioral segmentation, in which themicroprocessor divides occupants of multiple different vehicles intogroups or classes based on selected parameters of behavior using one ormore of an objective and non-objective segmentation methodology tomaximize a difference among segments with regards to each selectedbehavior parameter.